Liebermann said, “Three weeks ago.”
“Still.”
The old man drank.
Liebermann said to them, “These men are criminals. They’re wanted by your government.”
“Our government,” the old man said, setting his stein down onto its wet print. “Not yours.”
“That’s true,” Liebermann said. “I’m Austrian.”
The bartender went away. The round-faced old man watched him go.
Liebermann, putting spread hands on the photos, leaned forward and said, “This salesman may have killed your friend Döring.”
The old man looked at his stein, his lips pursed. He turned the stein’s handle around toward him.
Liebermann looked bitterly at him, and gathered the photos and put them back in his briefcase. He closed the briefcase, strapped it, and stood up.
The bartender, coming back, said, “Two marks.”
Liebermann put a five-mark note on the bar and said, “Some coins for the phone, please.”
He went into the booth and dialed Frau Döring’s number. The line was busy.
He tried Döring’s sister, in Oberhausen. No answer.
He stood crated in the phone booth with his briefcase between his feet, tugging at his ear and thinking of what to say to Frau Döring. She might very well be hostile to Yakov Liebermann, Nazi-hunter; and even if she weren’t, after her sister-in-law’s accusations she probably wouldn’t want to discuss Döring and his death with any stranger. But what could he tell her except the truth? How else gain a meeting with her? It struck him that Klaus von Palmen, in Pforzheim, might be getting better results than he. That would be all he’d need, to be outdone by von Palmen.
He tried Frau Döring again, following Chief Inspector Haas’s neatly penned digits. The phone at the other end rang.
“Yes?” A woman; quick, annoyed.
“Is this Frau Klara Döring?”
“Yes, who’s this?”
“My name is Yakov Liebermann. From Vienna.”
Silence. “Yakov Liebermann? The man who…finds the Nazis?”—surprised and puzzled, but not hostile.
“Looks for them,” Liebermann said, “only sometimes finds. I’m here in Gladbeck, Frau Döring, and I wonder if you’d be kind enough to let me have a little of your time, only half an hour or so. I’d like to talk with you about your late husband. I think he may have been involved—entirely innocently and without knowing about it—in the affairs of certain persons I’m interested in. May I come talk with you? Whenever it’s convenient for you?”
A clarinet piped faintly. Mozart? “Emil was involved…?”
“Maybe. Without his knowing it. I’m in your neighborhood now. May I come over? Or would you prefer to come out and meet me somewhere?”
“No. I can’t see you.”
“Frau Döring, please, it’s very important.”
“I can’t possibly. Not now. It’s the worst possible day.”
“Tomorrow, then? I’ve come to Gladbeck for the sole purpose of speaking to you.” The clarinet stopped, then piped again, repeating its last phrase, definitely Mozart. Played by the lover Springer? Which was why it was such a bad day to see him? “Frau Döring?”
“All right. I work until three. You can come over tomorrow at four.”
“That’s Frankenstrasse Twelve?”
“Yes. Apartment thirty-three.”
“Thank you. At four tomorrow. Thank you, Frau Döring.”
He freed himself from the phone booth and asked the bartender for directions to the building where Döring had died.
“It’s gone.”
“Which way was it, then?”
The bartender, bending, washing glasses, pointed a dripping finger. “Down there.”
Liebermann went down a narrow street and across a busy wider one. Gladbeck, or this part of it at least, was urban, gray, charmless. The smog didn’t help.
He stood looking at a rubbled lot flanked by masonry walls of old factory buildings. Three children piled broken stones, making an angled barrier. One of them wore a military knapsack.
He walked on. The next cross-street was Frankenstrasse; he followed it to Number 12, a soot-streaked buff apartment house, conventionally modern, behind a narrow well-kept lawn. From its rooftop a finger of black smoke rose up to join the smog-shroud.
He watched a woman struggle a baby carriage through the glass entrance door, and went on in the direction of his hotel, the Schultenhof.
In his clean stark German room he tried again to reach Döring’s sister. “God bless you whoever you are,” a woman greeted him. “We just this second stepped in. You’re our very first call.”
Fine. He could guess. “Is Frau Toppat there?”
“Oh poo. No, I’m sorry, she’s gone. She’s in California, or on the way. We bought the house from her the day before yesterday. It’s for Frau Toppat! She’s gone to live with her daughter. Do you want the address? I’ve got it here somewhere.”
“No, thanks,” Liebermann said. “Don’t bother.”
“Everything’s ours now: the furniture, the goldfish—we even have vegetables growing! Do you know the house?”
“No.”
“It’s awful, but it’s perfect for us. Well, the God-bless still goes. Are you sure you don’t want her address? I can find it.”
“Positive. Thank you. Good luck.”
“We’ve got it already, but thanks, we can always use a little more.”
He hung up, sighed, nodded. Me too, lady.
After he had washed up and taken his late-afternoon pills, he sat down at the much-too-small writing table, opened his briefcase, and got out the draft of an article he was writing about the extradition of Frieda Maloney.
The door opened to the extent of its short tight chain and a boy looked out, pushing dark hair aside from his forehead. He was thirteen or so, gaunt and sharp-nosed.
Liebermann, wondering if he had got the number wrong, said, “Is this Frau Döring’s apartment?”
“Are you Herr Liebermann?”
“Yes.”
The door closed partway; metal scraped.
The boy was a grandson, Liebermann supposed, or maybe—since Frau Döring was much younger than Döring had been—a son. Or maybe only a neighbor invited over so she wouldn’t be alone with an unknown male visitor.
Whoever he was, the boy held the door open all the way, and Liebermann went in—to a mirror-walled alcove busy with two or three himselves coming in, surprisingly seedy (“Get a haircut!” Hannah called. “Trim your mustache! Stand straight!”), and several boys in white shirts and dark trousers closing doors and hooking in chain-latches. Standing straight, Liebermann turned to the real boy. “Is Frau Döring in?”
“She’s on the phone.” The boy held a hand out for his hat.
Giving it to him, Liebermann smiled and asked, “Are you her grandson?”
“Her son.” The boy’s voice scorned the foolish question. He opened a mirror-doored closet.
Liebermann put his briefcase down and took his coat off, looking into a living room full of orange and chrome and glass, everything matching, store-like, unhuman.
He gave his coat to the boy, smiling, and the boy fitted a hanger into its sleeve, looking bored and dutiful. He was the height of Liebermann’s chest. A few coats hung in the closet, one of leopard skin. A bird, a stuffed raven or some such, peered out from behind hats and boxes on the shelf. “Is that a bird back there?” Liebermann asked.
“Yes,” the boy said. “It was my father’s.” He closed the door and stood looking at Liebermann with deep blue eyes.
Liebermann picked up his briefcase.
“Do you kill the Nazis when you catch them?” the boy asked.